Thursday 30th April

Hello again everyone!

It's the last day of April today, which means you've completed well over a month of home school!  Well done for keeping up both your spirits and your efforts!  Every day that passes brings us closer to normality again - I am so looking forward to seeing everyone back at school when it's safe for us to return.

Have you been doing any baking while you've been at home?  It seems that many of us have taken the opportunity while being at home to brush up on our cake-making skills - banana bread seems to be a very popular choice!  Did you know the Romans liked eating cake just as much as we do?  While I was researching some more information about the Romans, I found a recipe for Roman Honey Cakes, which only need three ingredients: eggs, flour and (not surprisingly!) honey.  I am definitely going to give these a try!  If you would like to have a go too, you can find the recipe here. Do let me know how they turn out!  

Take care and stay safe,

Mrs Vaqueiro

Wednesday 29th April

Hello everyone!

I hope you are all still keeping well and that the rain isn't making you too miserable!  

I've been busy doing some research for some new lessons ready for when we get back to school, and have stumbled upon the fascinating world of optical illusions.  Some of them are really amazing!  What do you see first here?  Two faces or a candle?

Some optical illusions are just confusing - have a look at this painting by M C Escher; it seems straightforward at first glance, but when you look closely it really bamboozles the brain!

Optical illusions were really popular in Victorian times, and children in particular used to enjoy making their own optical illusion toys, called thaumatropes, using paper or card.  If you would like to have a go at making one for yourself, you can follow the instructions here.  

You can make all sorts of different designs - there are many ideas and templates on the internet if you are feeling really inspired.  You don't have to use string or elastic either: you can stick the pictures to each side of a pencil or straw, and then twizzle it between the palms of your hands instead.

That's all from me for today - have fun, and keep safe (and dry!) at home.

Mrs Vaqueiro

Tuesday 28th April

Hello everyone!

I hope you are all well and have been keeping busy.  I can see that many of you are well on the way to achieving rock legend status on TT Rockstars, so well done to those of you who are practising every day!  There are some very impressive scores on there, and some of you have accumulated lots of 'cash' from all the time you've been spending practising.  

The weather forecast for today isn't great, so I thought it might be a good idea to suggest an indoor activity for you to try.  As I've mentioned before, the ladies from Artbase have been running a lot of online tutorials for artists of all ages to learn and develop new skills: you can learn how to draw an amazing owl by following the step by step instructions here.  

Stay safe and keep in touch if you can!

Mrs Vaqueiro

Monday 27th April

Hello everyone!

I hope you've had a good weekend and a chance to relax with your families at home.

I've updated the 3V Google Drive with another week's suggested activities for you to work through. I've also put some extra reading comprehension activities in the Additional Resources folder (look under '60 Second Reads') so that you can practise your fact retrieval and inference skills.  

It's been great to hear from so many of you with photos and messages about the activities that you are completing at home.  I hope you enjoyed making a Time Capsule for the future, and wonder if any of you managed to catch the Home Planetarium broadcast from the Space Centre?

This week's home learning task relates to another really famous tourist attraction: the Louvre Museum in Paris!  Although we can't visit in person just now, you can take a free virtual tour of the exhibits, and have a look at its most famous work of art: Da Vinci's portrait of the Mona Lisa.  You can find the virtual tours here or you can simply Google Louvre Virtual Tours. When you've finished having a look around, why not find out about the history of the Louvre itself?  It has a fascinating history, and is much older than people tend to realise.

That's all from me for today - stay safe and be kind to one another.

Mrs Vaqueiro

Friday 24th April

Good morning everyone!

I hope you are all still well and staying safe at home.  Just a quick update from me today, as it's my turn to go into school to look after those children who are still having to attend.

Have you been enjoying some time outside recently?  One of the positives of everyone staying at home has been a chance to really appreciate nature.  Without the traffic outside, it's so peaceful that we can hear the birds singing, and all around us, spring flowers are bursting into life.

The skies are clearer too - even at night!  Recently, many people have been trying to spot Starlink Satellites travelling overhead in the evenings.  Have you managed to spot them?  The clearer nights also mean we can see all the different stars.  When my children were small, we used to see how many different constellations we could spot.  Did you know they all have names?

This evening, the National Space Centre in Leicester is running a free online Planetarium experience for families, starting at 6pm.  You can follow their page on Facebook or tune into their YouTube Channel to find out more details.  If that whets your appetite for more stargazing, you can download a number of different apps to help you identify the constellations - Skyview and Star Walk are both free to use, but there are quite a few others too.  Remember you must ask an adult for permission before you start downloading anything! 

That's all from me until Monday - have a great weekend, stay safe and be kind to one another.

Mrs Vaqueiro

Thursday 23rd April

Good morning everyone!

Today is St George's Day, which is celebrated in different countries all over the world, since St George is the patron saint of not just England, but also Georgia, Greece, Lithuania, Palestine, Portugal and Russia, as well as the regions of Aragon and Catalonia in Spain!

23rd April was also the birthday of the playwright William Shakespeare, who lived in Tudor times and was born in Stratford upon Avon.  He wrote many famous poems and plays, which are still studied and performed all over the world today.

If you would like to watch a child-friendly version of one of his plays, you could start with 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' There is an animated version of the story here: Animated Shakespeare Tales, and I've put a powerpoint version of the story in the Google Drive. Why not write a review of this or any other film or TV programme? Remember to give it a star rating and summarise the story so that your readers can decide whether or not to watch it themselves. You could also have a go at some of the other Shakespeare-related activities that I've put in the Google Drive.

That's all from me for today. Keep safe at home, and look after yourselves and each other.

Mrs Vaqueiro

Wednesday 22nd April

Hello everyone!

I hope you are all well and still keeping safe at home.  Hopefully, you will have had the chance to dip into the resources on the updated Google Drive with ideas for work this week.

In addition to work set by school, the BBC has launched a home education service for children of all ages.  The BBC Bitesize team have put together daily lessons covering the key areas of the curriculum, which can be accessed via the red button on the remote control from 9.00am-11.00am every day, or on BBC iPlayer any time after that.  

Alternatively, the Oak National Academy is providing free online lessons for children to access from home, which might also be of interest.

Please don't feel that your children need to complete absolutely everything available from these resources: it would soon become overwhelming for everyone and, if your house is anything like mine, would result in some frazzled nerves (mainly mine...!).  I am only suggesting these activities in case your children are casting around for something different to do - it is very much up to you to choose which combinations will suit your families best. 

As always, the priority is very much for you all to keep safe and well.  I am missing everyone very much, and I know that Mrs Sanders and Mrs Carter are too: we send you all our very best wishes, and are looking forward to seeing you back in school as soon as we are all allowed back into the classroom.

Mrs Vaqueiro

Tuesday 21st April

Good morning everyone!

I hope you are all well and staying safe (and sane!) at home.  

As you know, there is not yet any proposed date for us to return to school, so with that in mind, the Department of Education has provided some guidance for parents and carers seeking to support their children with learning at home.  You can read the details for primary children here.  There are some further links and suggested activities on that page, which you could choose to follow alongside the work set by school.  

From our point of view, the most vitally important thing is that you and your families stay safe and well - managing to complete school work on top of that is something of a bonus, especially since so many of you will be juggling your own home working responsibilities alongside supervising the children.  It is, however, really important for the children to try and read every day, and hopefully many will choose to do so independently, just for their own enjoyment.  

If you are running out of reading material, have a look at Libraries Connected which provides information about a number of different free reading resources for all ages.  Audiobooks are also a great way of enjoying different stories - don't forget that the website Audible has numerous free audiobooks for children to listen to, and that author David Walliams is continuing with his daily story podcast at 11.00 every day (although you can access it at any time).

Take care and look after each other,

Kind regards

Mrs Vaqueiro

Monday 20th April

Hello again everyone!

I hope you all had a lovely Easter break and were able to get out and enjoy the sunshine, as well as munch through plenty of chocolate.  It's been great to hear from so many of you with photos of your hard work at home, and to see you enjoying completing some of the Lego and arts and crafts challenges on the Google Drive.  I was also really pleased to see that some of you had made birthday cards to send to the Queen - I will be very excited to hear about it when she writes back to you!

I've added some new tasks to this week's folder on the Google Drive, and have also added to the Additional Resources folder with some extra ideas for activities that you can do at home.  Some of the work will need adult support, but there are also plenty of ideas for you to do independently.

One of the activities in the Additional Resources file is to create a Time Capsule.  A Time Capsule is a special keepsake from a particular point in time, which people store in a safe place, so that in the future, people can understand exactly what it was like to live through that time.  One of Year 3's '50 Things to Do at Swan Lane' is to create a Time Capsule - and given the extraordinary circumstances at present, I think it would be a great idea for us to create our Time Capsules now.  You can either choose to keep your Time Capsules safe at home, or when we are back in school, you can bring them in to me so that I can put them all in a special box at school, for people to look at in the future.  I'm sure that in the years to come, people will be fascinated to know what it was like to live through this period of lockdown.

That's it for today - keep safe, and be kind to one another.

Mrs Vaqueiro

Friday 3rd April

Hello everyone!

I hope you're all keeping well and staying safe at home.

It's the last day of term today, so I thought it would be helpful if I let you have some ideas of things to do in the holidays.  As I mentioned yesterday, I won't be setting any work for the next two weeks while we are on holiday, but you can always dip into the resources in the Google Drive if you feel like doing some work.

The ladies from Art Base are running some online art tutorials during the holidays - you can register your interest at https://www.art-base.co.uk/ if you would like to take part.

In addition, J K Rowling has set up an amazing, free 'Harry Potter at Home' resource which is well worth a look - you can find details here. There are lots of different wizarding activities to keep you out of mischief!

It only remains for me to wish you a very Happy Easter - enjoy the break, make the most of any sunshine, and definitely eat plenty of chocolate!

With best wishes to you and your families

Mrs Vaqueiro

Thursday 2nd April

Good morning!  

I hope you are all well and staying safe at home.  I can hardly believe we are coming to the end of our second week of working from home - in some ways it's flown by, and in other ways... it really hasn't!

We would normally be breaking up for the Easter holidays tomorrow, and looking forward to a well-earned rest and the chance to spend some quality time with our families!  As it is technically the holidays for the next two weeks, I won't be setting any further school work until term time begins again.  Of course, you can still dip into the resources in the Google Drive if you would like to, but there's certainly no pressure from school for you to spend hours slaving over the books.  As I've said many times, the priority right now is your health and well-being.

With that in mind, you could spend the next two weeks focusing on keeping healthy in both mind and body - try to do some exercise every day and get outside in the sunshine if the weather allows.  You could also try some of the 'Peace Out' children's mindfulness meditations that we use in school (the link to the first one is here), or do some colouring to help you calm down if you are feeling frazzled.  Maybe you could also try out some of the healthy recipes that I've shared on the Google Drive?

One of the activities that I had planned to do with you all in school this week was one of our '50 Things to do at Swan Lane.'  In Year 3, one of our 'things to do' is to write to HM the Queen, and, since her 94th birthday is coming up on 21st April, I had planned for us all to make and send her a birthday card.  The exciting thing about writing to the Queen is that she always writes back!  If you would like to write to her and send her a birthday card, you can send it to:

Her Majesty the Queen

Buckingham Palace

London

SW1A 1AA

As you can imagine, the Queen receives hundreds of letters every day, so it does take her a few weeks to write back - but it is very exciting to receive a special letter from Buckingham Palace!

If you do write a letter or make a card for the Queen, please could you take a photo before it goes in the post, and let me have a copy?  I am planning to put together a special folder of the different activities we do in Year 3, and it would be a shame to miss all these masterpieces! 

Take care and keep in touch,

With best wishes

Mrs Vaqueiro

Wednesday 1st April

Hello everyone!

It's the first day of a brand new month, and another day closer to everything being back to normal.  In the UK, 1st April is often celebrated as April Fools' Day - has anyone played a prank on you this morning?  Or have you played a prank on anyone else?  Don't forget that you can only play tricks on people up to 12.00 midday - if you do it afterwards, then tradition says that you are the April Fool!

Did you know that in France, instead of April Fools, they have 'poisson d'avril' - or April Fish Day?  There is still a tradition of playing tricks though.  How many different April Fool traditions from around the world can you find? 

The start of April also reminds me that Easter will soon be here.  In recent years, more and more people have been decorating their homes for Easter, just as they would for Christmas.  If you have the ingredients at home, and an adult to help you, you could make some salt dough Easter decorations to brighten up your bedroom or sitting room.  Here's a link to some instructions - Salt Dough Easter Decorations.

I hope you are all still keeping well and staying safely at home.  I'm really looking forward to seeing you all again soon and hearing all about your adventures while we've been away from school.

With best wishes to you all

Mrs Vaqueiro